Nancy L. Earp, retired clerk at Broadmead
Nancy L. Earp, a retired clerk who had worked at the Broadmead retirement community in Cockeysville, died March 15 from sepsis at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The Sparks resident was 76. Nancy Leer Weidner was the daughter of Frank Weidner, a plumber, and Bernice Weidner, a homemaker.
She was born in Baltimore and raised in Parkville.
After graduating in 1959 from Parkville High School, Mrs. Earp went to work for the old Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. as a stenographer. She later worked as a secretary for Montgomery Ward at its Towson store.
It was there that she met her future husband, Laurence Earp, who worked in appliance sales at Ward’s. They married in 1971.
Mrs. Earp subsequently worked in circulation departments at the old News American and The Baltimore Sun, selling subscriptions.
She also had worked for the Brook Shettle Insurance Co. selling travel insurance, then became a clerk at Broadmead in 1999.
She retired in 2012. Mrs. Earp was an avid collector of antiques.
Services were held Saturday at the Evans Funeral Home in Parkville.
In addition to her husband, Mrs. Earp is survived by her daughter, Jennifer Illiano of Fallston; a sister, Joyce Li Beth of Charlotte, N.C.; and two grandchildren. An earlier marriage to William Prime ended in divorce. efforts that expanded “The MacNeil/ Lehrer Report” to a full hour in 1983, making it the first hourlong nightly newscast on any network.
In 1984, despite having no experience in daily journalism, he became the head of NBC News. At the time, the network’s news division was slipping in ratings and respect, with its “NBC Nightly News” in third place behind CBS and ABC and the morningshow “Today” trailing ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Mr. Grossman helped engineer a turnaround at NBC within two years, as the “Nightly News” occasionally outranked its competitors, and “Today” became the No. 1 morning show.
He hoped to build on those gains, but in 1986 the network was bought by General Electric. The new corporate leaders instituted across-the-board budget cuts, and Mr. Grossman clashed with NBC’s new president, Robert Wright. Mr. Grossman was dismissed in 1988 and replaced by Michael Gartner.
After leaving NBC, Mr. Grossman taught at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and, in 1993, became president of Horizons TV.
In the late 1990s, he and former PBS chairman Newton Minow launched Digital Promise, a nonprofit that receives federal and private funding to use digital technologies to improve education.